 Thanks for being here early on the snowing morning. Thank you. It was a challenging drive. Not the worst, but challenging. Thank you for having us. I'm Shannon Kennedy with JB Kennedy Associates, which is a sole proprietor lobbying firm. I'm based out of Williston, Vermont. And I'm here today for T-Mobile on H94 and H145. I can give you back a lot of the time. You just lost up in your last few minutes because these are, I'll speak to each bill. I'll start with H94 simply because it's the four that they go in. I don't want to sound harsh, but T-Mobile, this is a tax. And T-Mobile does not support an increase in the tax for this particular use. It feels it doesn't, broadly, cover all the entire customer base in Vermont. And it's a tax under monitors. We're not saying that it's tax on us that we wouldn't be passed on. But I think the best, simplest response I can give you on that bill is that we don't support it. We understand it. We don't have a suggestion for where you would get the money. We understand the need for money in this area. But we would suggest that this is not the place to get it. So that's our comment on that one. On H145, we do support that bill because it does expand that tax to providers who aren't beyond us who are selling our services. You know, T-Mobile doesn't have any stores yet in Vermont, so how we sell stuff is a little bit different in Vermont. But we see this tax as being leveling the playing field to everyone who's a fee leveling the playing field to everybody who's selling telecommunications services. So we, T-Mobile, support it happily. Sorry. So T-Mobile doesn't have stores, but you do sell cards? Yeah. Well, they're sold in stores around. I don't know how many. I was going to try and look. I know in a couple stores I went into this weekend, I saw them. We don't know how many. The woman I work with who does want to come up here in March sometime by the way to talk with you people, Stacy Brins. We don't know, but we believe they should be paying the tax just as we do if you buy directly through us. And a lot of our sales are with prepaid cards. You get your phone, and then you do a prepaid plan. You pay a month ahead. There are some sales of our service that are a month behind. And then on your billing, as I'm told, you see the tax and the fees. If you're paying ahead, you pay a set fee. It's $40 right now, I believe, for one line. And the fees and taxes are included in that $40. So in that case, T-Mobile just pays the tax? We pay. Yes. Wow. Customer pays. It's built into what the customer pays. It's not separated now. It's not separate. It's not unbundled. Just to clarify, $194, you're calling it a tax. And $145, you're calling that a fee. Well, I think that's the way they're referred to. I'm not sure. I may be wrong. But they're both. USF fee has been in existence. And it has set out purposes as that I'd meant to pull it up this morning, but you saw it all last week. And designated uses. And part of our problem with that is that we believe it goes beyond those designated uses. And not the use that is helpful to the broad base of people, consumers. OK? Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Chris, do you want to go? Sure. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Chris Rice. I'm a lawyer, lobbyist here in Montpelier, from MMR here on behalf of Verizon. I was asked to come and talk with you about $145. I didn't prepare comments for $94, but I can share with you some perspective on that. As John said, Verizon's in a similar position relative to each $145. We think it's a cleaner way to collect the fee tax, not going to get hung up on which word you use. It's a charge. For those point of sale, that would bring Vermont in line with the overwhelming majority of states that assess the charge on prepaid services. We think it's a much cleaner, transparent, effective way to do it. So unless there are any questions on that, I'll jump back to H94. That's not something historically that Verizon has supported. In fact, it's something historically that Verizon has opposed. That being said, we know what the level of importance that the legislature and the state of Vermont has placed on increasing connectivity throughout the state. There is a relationship between the two bills, obviously. I think if you chose to deal with the point of sale issue and brought it in line with how other states do it, the increase in the universal service fund charge would certainly be less objectionable from their perspective. I think there's room to talk about the connectivity that we have to, and I think get to a point where the company would be comfortable. So I'm assuming that Verizon historically has opposed the tax because it raises the cost of doing business. Sure. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm just checking that. But if it raises the cost of business for everybody in that business uniformly, there's no competitive disadvantage to any of these. Well, and again, this goes back to historically, that money has been the funds out of universal service fund has gone to recipients that are not necessarily Verizon wireless customers, or to fund their infrastructure the same way it has been used historically for other providers. So could that change down the road? Sure. But that's more of a historical perspective than what we might be looking at now in the world to progress. Part of this is about getting more broadband coverage to rural areas, does Verizon have a position on whether they would be interested in providing that service to the rural areas, or is the economics just not there for them wireless in the US? And I think that's always a challenge, is being able to do it in a way that is sustainable and viable. And I think our experience with Coverage Co. is a great example of when you try and make something work, and it's really, really challenging. They have deployed and will continue to expand their deployment where they can make the business case to do it. I think your question may be going more towards, are there other opportunities for public-private partnership? Is that? Well, you had mentioned that the Verizon isn't historically a recipient of any of the USF funds, because a lot of that is angled towards, obviously, 9-1-1, but also the rural broadband initiative. And one of the technologies that could help resolve their old broadband challenge is high-speed, reliable wireless that gets into the nooks and crannies of the state. It's funny you ask. I had a similar question about a week ago. I've talked with a company, again, historically. That's not been something that the company has been excited about. I think they are increasingly open to that. And where that goes, they have a couple of initiatives underway in other states. And I think they want to see how those projects proceed. But there is, I think, an increasing appetite and a growing willingness to explore those possibilities. I'm being vague, because that's as much as I have. I wish I could give you something more specific. Sorry. Sure. So I'm hearing where you're at, but just wanting to maybe ask for some follow-up, Trump, this proposal is looking to help improve the business case really in the areas where it doesn't make sense. And so if this type of proposal does not work for our existing carriers, is there some other way that the state can help improve the business case in the unserved areas that makes more sense? That's a great question. And what I'll ask, and I think what I expect to get back is information relating to where they have gone, more of this public-private partnership and other jurisdictions, get more details on what that looks like and how that makes more sense from their perspective. Oh, yes. Absolutely. I appreciate that. To dive back into the vague world that you were discussing with Senator Chase, in my particular case, I have a Verizon cell phone and no service at home. So I use VoIP. So in the blurring of these lines, broadband build-out helps with my cellular service. So even if Verizon isn't the recipient of funds, building out in underserved areas still potentially, there is a benefit. Certainly, totally get that. So I guess that was more of a statement. I don't know if you have a comment. No, I think to me it's we're getting to the point where it's a benefit ecosystem as we rise that level. For individual services that has spent off benefits for others, there's no question. Thank you, Chris. Good morning, committee. Chuck Storow, Lane Island Public Affairs on behalf of AT&T. I was here, I think it was last Friday speaking to H145, which we do strongly support. And I showed you the Public Utilities Commission's order that directs the cell phone carriers to basically send in what they think they owe on the prepaid calling plans, the USFV on the prepaid calling plans. I did a little back of the envelope math showing you what kind of numbers we're talking about. And then I showed you the math of the country showing the states that it's basically from Martin, Massachusetts, the only two states that don't do point of sale. So we definitely support that. As to H94, I guess what I would say is we don't oppose it. We get it, AT&T, the other providers operate in a very competitive market. It's difficult for them to build in rural areas because of the low density and the cost of doing that. A lot of their money has to go to just upgrading and densifying their existing network to keep up with the changes in technology and to be able to handle the exponentially increasing amount of data that's going across those networks. So it is difficult to get into the rural areas. The philosophically, the increase in the fee is sort of a gulp factor because it increases the cost of our gulp factor. It increases the cost of our service to the customers, basically the customers, other than the prepaid, as it stands right now, who pay that. So it's going to come out of the monitors. But there is a problem, and it's a legitimate problem. We're trying to solve it. We're getting there, but it isn't being solved fast enough. So we understand the need for the state to try and fill that hole or do something about it. So I guess what I can say is I'm not going to go around the building trumpeting, support for this increase, but we're not going to oppose it. After that, when we spoke about the prepaid cards last time, Maria left council reference to federal law change but didn't have specifics on it. Can you provide any more specifics? I don't, but I'd like to know more about it. I did speak with my partner, Scott Mackey, who specializes in consulting for the wireless companies on tax policy issues. He does this nationally. He's not just in Vermont. And he confirmed there is such a law. He was going to send me a citation to it. I don't have that at this point. But I'm going to take Maria's word that it exists. And I'm going to track it down because obviously, if that could be dispositive in another zone, I will do that. And per conversation I had with you, Mr. Chairman, yesterday, I'd actually like to talk about it's 248A, but I know maybe I've only got five minutes. And perhaps I should hold off on that. I sent Sarah a bunch of stuff. You've got 10 minutes. 10 minutes? Yeah. OK. Did you want to get into it? No, I just want to say that I really appreciate the acknowledgement that there is a problem. I think it's, I mean, we all experience it. So it's obvious. Thank you. So 248A is the permitting process for that. Cellcares can use vis-a-vis the Public Utilities Commission to get permits for building cell sites. It was enacted in 2007. It is optional. In other words, you don't have to use it. But if you don't use it, you're most likely going to need to go through Act 250 and local zoning. The statute was originally enacted with a sunset because it was kind of a big deal to create a permitting process that bypassed Act 250 and local zoning. Since then, that sunset's been extended four times. And we're here to ask that it be made permanent. In H160, bill section, I think it's two or three, does that? Just simply it's a striking out subsection I in 248A, which is the sunset. Oh, this isn't the one I wanted to look at. Let me see. Well, let me give you this one. This was from two years ago. This is a document that the Department of Public Service generated the last time we had this discussion about, at that time, extending the sunset. And this is just showing statistics of the usage of 248A by the various providers during the period 2010 to 2016. As you'll see, 566 petitions. And I'm going to get into this time permitting. There's various sort of gradations or classifications of projects that are in the statute. And they set forth that there. You'll see from the bottom table that AT&T during that period was the largest user of 248A. Follow closely by Verizon, VTEL, and the others. So it's getting a lot of use. We're continuing to use it. We have our first net project that involves some 30 new sites. And these are going to be in areas that are not covered. That 248A will be very helpful for, and not only does that serve the first responder community, but it also will serve our regular customers, folks. So that's usage since 2016. I don't know what the numbers are, but I do know that AT&T has been using it right along. Representing, flipping them around so much. Sorry. I do have a question. Go ahead. Okay. I know in section 248, for all other kinds of certificates of public good, even though it's not reviewed as an Act 250 application, the Act 250 criteria are used. Is that the same? Exactly, it is. Let me just, this will be, try not to get too granular on this. This document goes through that. There's three categories of projects. The first one I'm going to speak to is de minimis. That's basically putting new equipment on, or upgrading existing equipment on an existing facility. And it's a pretty basic process. You give notice to the municipality and the department, and there's a 30 day clock in which somebody can object to whether it qualifies as a de minimis project. And if nobody says anything, then you get a permit and it just comes right out. Limited size and scope. That is essentially most of the where the activity is that it relates to towers, not more than 140 feet tall. You have to give notice to the town, to the department, and to the joining landowners at least 60 days before you can file your actual application. And I stress at least because you can do it 90 and 120 days and that often happens. If there are no objections, which is the majority of cases, the certificate of public good is to be issued within 60 days. If there are objections, the board agrees to hold a, we'll look into it and they have another 90 days. The final category is basically all other. They prove tall towers, towers more than 150 feet, 140 feet tall. Again, 60 days pre-advanced filing pre-notice and timelines when the public utility commissions are to get this CPG out. The standards are for tall towers, the facility will not have an undue adverse effect on aesthetics, historic site, et cetera, et cetera. Views from I-89, I-91, officially designated scenic highways. And in considering those issues, the public utilities commission is supposed to take and continue to account the criteria, the relevant criteria in Act 250, limited size and scope projects. Most of those criteria are sort of deemed to be waived at the get-go, except for floodways, building in floodways, and then aesthetic scenic beauties, et cetera. But if somebody raises an issue saying this has an impact under some of these other criteria, the commission can pull those in and take a look at it with respect to those criteria. Both of those projects, tall towers, limited size and scope, there's a lot of language in 248 about whether or not you can co-locate on or at an existing telecom facility and there's some real granular kind of specifications in terms of the distances and get the look and so forth and so on. But basically, the statute essentially says that if you can co-locate somewhere else, then you're not gonna get a permit for what you're proposing if that's the case. And this is something that's been discussed a lot over the years. And this is the notion that the public utilities commission must give substantial deference to the relevant town's town plan, the recommendation of the town's Select Board and Planning Commission, which can be based on local zoning. And the problem with just saying that the local zoning absolutely applies is that sometimes it just doesn't work in terms of projects. There's a lot of ordinances that date from the 90s that say telecom towers can only be, I think, 10 feet taller than the tree canopy around you and from a propagation point of view, that can be very problematic and from an ability to co-locate, you know, you can't set two antenna arrays in a 10 foot space, so you need to be taller. We don't have the ability to condemn a property for locating a site. We have to work on a voluntary basis with landowners or so sometimes. We can only find a parcel where maybe the setback is an adequate in terms of the zoning ordinance setback from about property lines. That gives the public utilities commission take a look at that. If it can work within those setbacks, then you've got to do it. But if it doesn't, they have the ability to say, well, the greater good of having coverage is such that we will allow deviation from that. So if there's a tension there, but that seems to have been a good way of bridging that tension is to make the commission look at the local zoning in a town plan. If a town asks the applicant, and this should happen in any development project, you go and talk to the people before you, you know, the effective parties, the town, the neighbors and stuff like that, but there's been cases where providers have just simply filed their application or done their pre-notice and filed their application. So now if there's a request to meet with the select board of planning commission, the carrier has to go and the department has to go and we can talk and hear them out. And that sometimes can be very productive in making changes. It's written into the statute that the select board and the planning commission has an absolute right to appear and participate. One of the complaints early on was that the utility commission was issuing decisions where there'd been comments from the town and nothing was said in the decision. It was like it was never said. So now if the town says something, even if the ruling is against what the town says, they've got to at least speak to it in the decision. And the town has the right to ask the department to retain an expert. So overall it's a successful program. I don't think there's been a lot of controversy in terms of projects. There's been some but not a huge amount and seems like it incorporates active 50 values, gives deference to the towns. It's very helpful to the carriers. It seems to be working and we would ask that community fair will consider repealing the sunset. In terms of does AT&T differentiate its commercial application and first net application? What do you mean? I mean we have our first net projects, which were the result of a dialogue with the Department of Public Safety where they basically said we want you to build in these areas primarily because there was no coverage. And so we're doing that 30 sites over the next 40 years and there's six more that are gonna be built by a third party that's gonna be done on our back. So one of my questions is a very familiar one which is about hardening these towers for a first net as opposed to a higher standard if they are purposes, primary purpose. I know there's code for commercial assets, too. But hardening to a higher standard generators with longer run time, higher wind resistance. Representative, I'm not absolutely sure if there's a separate set of specifications in that regard for the whole first net sites that may well be, I honestly don't know. There are standards for emergency. I don't know if they're mandatory or voluntary. I mean, I know there's back of batteries at all the sites, most of the sites have generators, not all of them. And I think the towers are all engineered. If they're towers, to me, certain wind loads and ice loads and things like that, whether they're stronger or better in relation to a regular old cell site, I don't know if I'm sorry, but I can try to find out. Yes, sir. Is there a map showing where those 30 sites are? There is, but I'd have to jump out the window and commit suicide before I could give that. That's why I want to give that one. No one's ever said that. I just want to know where we're two weeks from here. I know, it's a sort of, it's an issue. Everybody wants to know, there is a map that folks at public safety, we worked in conjunction with them to the development. You know, I wish I could say more, but it is proprietary and I can't. So that of course makes it hard to not invest in areas where we're allowed additional investment in here. Yeah, I guess the only thing I would say, well, yeah, you're right. I mean, there's a little bit of a difference with wire line or cable and emulable. My sense is that most of the investment that the state is looking at doing is an expected wire and cables, fiber optic and things like that. Certainly, if we had a site in an area or going in an area that's going to provide really high speed mobile service, maybe that would avoid the need to do the wired thing, but generally you're going to want to do both. And we're going to do the mobile and the wireless and the station. As you know, this is cases so poor in some of these places where the phone lines are problematic, you know, it would be helpful for us to prioritize places that there was not confusion coming soon. I guess that's basically the question. Is there a map? Is there a plan for cell towers and chair? First-net towers, but is there? They do develop, you know, I mean, they have what they call search rings. They go out to the network engineers, identify areas where, you know, they would like to build facilities. Search rings are created, site acquisition consultants go out to look for landowners who might be going to lease. So they do have these plans. They're fluid. You know, we'll have a list for 2020 and it's sort of like if we've got the money and if we're not, you know, that money is they're triaging their resources amongst all the states. And so there is a plan and, but again, it's proprietary and I guess the concern is in the end you put up a tower. Our competitors know where it is. Frankly, they'll end up probably being on the tower, but, you know, there's an interim period. If we're in a new area, if we're the only one, we might get a few more customers and get them sewn up. And if we let that, our competitors know that in advance, then we lose that swing and possibly lose us. But it is, it's a brutally competitive market. So they hold their cards to configure the chairs. Yeah. Okay. Are we ending? No, you're ticking up. Excuse me. Please be voting on that. Well, I try just to follow up. I mean, it's frustrating trying to coordinate the build out of cell phone service when we don't know what, what the companies are doing because it's all proprietary. Right? So I certainly, I certainly appreciate that representative. I guess my sort of only response would be, I'm not interested in the state of Vermont is looking to build out, you know, build, create a cell phone company license spectrum, do all of that, that you're really focused on the land, I call it land line, this, you know, fiber optic or coaxial. I mean, it seems to me that cell phone, the cell towers are good, not only for voice service, in places where the copper lines are deteriorating and people are not gonna have access to a dial tone if there isn't a cell tower nearby, but also for broadband in those last mile situations. It's true. So how do we coordinate this when we can't coordinate it? I'm just wondering, I don't know the answer, this is all new to me. Yeah, I don't know if I can give you a real answer. I think, you know, it's pretty well known where there's poor landline based broadband service and they should just focus on those areas. And if we're gonna be going in there and that might have avoided you having to go there, well, it's still all for the good. I suppose, you know, you could say about that money that would have gone somewhere else and I don't really have a good response to that. Okay, one last question I'm gonna give up and that is the DPS, whatever it's called, the drive study that they did. Is that been real useful to AT&T and any other companies? Well, I think it is. They were, they're very interested in the fact to ask for the data from the department. And so, you know, they noticed that for sure. Yeah, okay, thank you. Is that position? Yeah, kind of two questions. First is, CPGs are public documents, right? Yes. So, theoretically, obviously you can't give us information but if that, where people are building is recorded, then there should be a mechanism to find out what projects are going on, what CPGs have been issued. That's right. You think they're online. I think, you know, take a little bit of doing but it's mainly only to go through the board's orders. And kind of to build off what Scott said, would you be able to ask AT&T if they have any suggestions on how to formulate a holistic full coverage plan for the state that would incorporate their services or perhaps a better way to put it, how their services could be incorporated into a holistic plan that will most efficiently serve all residents? I'd be happy to ask that question. Yeah. Is that fair? Good. Any more questions? This is Tim Briglin calling. I'm the chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. Yeah. And we're happy that you are able to join us today. I've got a committee of seven other people here with me today. And I understand you can spend a few minutes with us on the phone. Yes, absolutely. And I appreciate you allowing me the opportunity to testify. And I think what I am supposed to be testifying about is precision land management as it relates to agriculture and water quality opportunities and how technology supports that with it or is not supporting it currently within Vermont. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay. So one of the things that is really a necessity to have the accuracy so that those systems work is real dependable cell phones, towers and coverage throughout the Elmmer Valley. And so it's something that is usable in ensuring that the tillage practices and variable rate applications of herbicides, pesticides, fertilizer, all of that can then link to the yield and managing of the soils within the farms database that everything gets mapped. There's two ways to provide that sub one inch accuracy. And one is to- Yes, yes. Brian? Brian? Yes. Can we interrupt you for just a sec? Sure. I have a member who has a question for you. Brian, this is Representative Sabilia and this is the Energy and Technology Committee. So if I could ask you to indulge us and maybe give us a 50,000 foot view, one minute description of the systems that you're talking about and the goal of those systems so that we can understand. Sure. So today's current farm equipment can be set up with a GPS system that controls and monitors everything that you're doing and you can link that to planting, to tillage, to planting, to fertilizing, to harvesting. And when you have that, you map your fields and then it sets it all and if it's accurate, it sets it down to sub one inch accuracy and so that your maps overlay and you can really control and ensure you're not over-fertilizing and sure you could even use practices of things called strip till, for instance, where you're not tilling all of the soil but you're tilling a seed bed for maybe just a six inch seed bed and so that you're not disturbed in all the soils and you don't have the same erosion. There's a lot of practices that apply and it can be used when you have this type of accuracy. Vermont is really challenged in the ability to do a lot of these in that we do not have dependable cell phones and we do not have an RTK tower system. I'm preparing, so that's the second way that the technology committee can support in the absence of quality cell phones, we can put our own radio towers in and those radio towers will cover an eight mile radius and down to the sub one inch and you start to lose the, as you get further away from the radio tower, you'll start to lose some of the accuracy so it'll actually go out to a 30 mile radius but to get to the sub one inch, it's an eight mile radius and that's another way that we could so to speak skin the cat and being able to provide those tools that are necessary to feed into water quality. I'm going to be, those towers cost $6,000 a piece. I'm going to put four up this year and see, basically test it and see if it works. It'll be something that is an interim solution. It seems to be more achievable maybe than in the short term, having tremendous improvements and the cell phone services throughout Vermont and it's something that we could control and provide the necessary things to have one of those stations is internet service and power and then it will send out the radio signal and everything adjusts off that radio signal. So, Brian, this is Tim Breglin again. Can you tell us a little bit more about the RTK technology? Is that something that would be privately implemented and what you simply have to do is to hook each tower up to a broadband connection and obviously it has to have some power as well? Yes, it's something that it's not controlled the same way as the cell phone towers. It's only need to be three feet off the ground. It used to be a larger towers that would go out in no farm field. The technology has progressed so now it actually comes in a box. You have an antenna that needs to go up but the box needs to be three feet off the ground. It's something that I had wanted to pitch to the committee last year. We were scheduled to talk to you last year and I wanted to pitch it as something that maybe we could get a grant and share some expense and get better coverage. And is this a technology that's primarily used in the agricultural world or are there other uses out there where? It can be used by any, you have a subscription to link to connect to the tower groups there. It's all one large, it actually goes across the US. There's a lot of coverage and throughout North America actually goes up into Canada as well, this whole system. And I think it's $600 a year to connect. No limits, it's not like data coverage or anything like that where you only have allowed so many bites but your receiver can connect to any of those towers if you go between towers, they're all interconnected. The coverage map gets pretty sparse when you get up here into New England because there's not been a lot of people that have input into it and that's why I wanted to try it in Vermont. Any other industry that runs off from GPS can utilize that, they just have to pay the, they have to pay, if they're doing it, it's for GPS, for global positioning systems. And so any, if you had perhaps another service company that wants to track their vehicles and they find that that's more dependable or cheaper than satellite or cell phone service and that's a way that they could do it. So Brian, we've got a couple of other questions from folks around the table, representative Chase. Yeah, right quick, is this the same technology that is used for like courting and precision grading and could it be leveraged for autonomous cars and stuff like that as well or is it pretty much just agricultural? No, I think it could be in the future but you would have to have whatever you, for like autonomous cars, you're absolutely gonna need to ensure, for it to work, you need to ensure continuous coverage and so whatever system it would certainly work for that because it gets you so one inch, assuming we had the adequate coverage. And I'm not familiar with the, did you say grading? I said courting and like precision grading, like you know, giant caterpillar graders and bulldozers. Yes, I mean it certainly could be that I'm not sure what it does for elevation change. A lot of times in the grading, you have to put some posts out but I could look into that for you. I don't see why it wouldn't work if it gets so one inch positioning, it might need to be paired with some other link. Thank you. Brian, this is a, is this a one way system that your, the receiver mounted on the farm equipment receives the GPS data and then applies it or is there a two way communication involved? It's a receiver system, yes. The equipment, wherever you're operating out of whether it be a tractor or a sprayer, you have a wash receiver on there and that will receive the radio communications. Yeah, Brian, you said you both need both power and cell service for this to work. Is this- Do you need power and internet service? And internet, oh and internet service, okay. So in terms of power, is this behind the meter? Is this a line you're running out to the field where the arcade gate tower is? What we'll do is we'll put a, we have four stores throughout Vermont and my plans for initially at least is to mount them in our stores where we can just plug into an outlet. Oh, I see, okay. And the internet services, that's why you need the broadband obviously, okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for Brian? Yeah, I don't know if you could put a number on this but what kind of, well, I mean, you talked about multiple benefits including environmental, water quality, things like that but I imagine one of the primary drivers is to be more efficient, increase your productivity. Do you have, can you quantify that at all? You know, this kind of system potentially makes you 10% more efficient? I think I would defer to a dairyman or farmer who's actually utilized the technology and see, I know that it allows them to to run different hours sometimes. For instance, planting at night, you used to have to have roll markers where you had to be able to visibly see everything or have a really good light setup that covered out to your markers. And now with the technology, you can work around the clock when you have small weather windows. So I think it's a combination of productivity and increasing the productivity, the ability to use equipment that is difficult to judge. Some of our mowers now are 32 feet wide and it's a very difficult thing to judge when you lose the productivity because you have more overlap before you leave tails in the field, for instance. And so in all of the aspects where you're using it, there's certainly some productivity gains. It'd be tough for me to quantify it without more scientific data. Certainly the biggest area that I see is the management productivity and the ability to have accurate data for both the state and federal oversight. Everything is mapped, everything is accounted for. It's not pencil and paper. And so it allows a manager to be more scientific and productive in their application of time and in their ability to ensure that they're fulfilling all of the regulatory requirements. And Brian, this is Tim Briglin again. To what extent are folks in the agricultural community is there, is the technology that they're currently employing able to plug into a system like this? Or is it a build it and they will come kind of sit back or is the technology out there and folks are looking for the bandwidth out there which you're creating to serve what they currently have? There is a significant number of our agricultural operations that are already have invested in the technologies. Their ability to use it to its fullest is quite limited. But our large and medium dairies that have upgraded equipment in the last, I would say roughly 10 years, a lot of that equipment is already outfitted with the ability to utilize this. And we have a number of them that are trying to utilize it. In fact, I've got a new hemp roller who needs this technology to be able to do what he needs to do because they're doing, and the vegetable growers can use this because if you've seen where you go down and you make hills and you lay your multi-plastic and you wanna be able to drive right back over that and transplant into that hill and you wanna, the ability to do that and not tear the plastic, you need some one inch accuracy or you're going to have problems where you've tearing plastic and creating potential weed issues. And so there's a lot of other areas and they're using that currently. It's just, we're having a very difficult time to gain the accuracy necessary. We're about at the six inch accuracy mark now and it seems like that would be great but it's not, the variance by the time you get done a long field it's not workable really. Well, thank you, Brian. This was really helpful. As part of our testimony that we're gonna receive this morning, I think we're actually gonna see some visual of these systems in place. So it was really helpful for you to give us an introduction to this and we'll let you get back to work. Okay, well thank you for the opportunity and when I'm over, they at the state house I'll drop off a catalog to just show you what some of the equipment is and you could circulate it with the committee as part of that education process. Great, thanks for your time. Okay, thank you. Right here. So next on our list, we have Jonathan Chamberlain who might not be here. I'm here. Please join us. All right, I guess I could stand here. Where are you, are you welcome to sit at the table? Comfortable either way. Okay. The microphone's here. Okay, great. And if you could, we tape all our hearings if you could identify yourself for the record. Sure, great. For sandwiches, make sure we sell for those of you. Okay. All right, I'm Scott Magnan. I'm from St. Albans, Vermont. Grew up on a dairy farm, been in agriculture my whole life. In 1997, I started operation doing crop work for farmers and part of that was manure spreading. And as things developed in Vermont, we found a need to do a better job at recording what we were doing on our manure spreading application. It was a requirement through the LFOs at that time to map or to have records of what we were doing. So that's how I got involved with Precision Ag probably 10 years ago. So we just started by mapping what we were doing so we could keep track. It was very cumbersome. We were doing multiple farms and a train operators or even come up with a system to figure out what we had done was difficult. So this was the avenue that we pursued. In doing that, I found it difficult in Vermont to find access to resources to be able to develop that. So we were kind of a little bit on the leading edge of that technology and the software support. So I struggled with it, but I made it work. It was definitely an improvement. So in about, I think in 2014, I became a dealer for Ag Veter Technology. I was a company out of Ames, Iowa that sell precision ag equipment and they also provide training. So I was able to get software training, hardware training out of Ames. So since we've done several projects for several farmers in the area, we've gone from manure spreading into planting, fertilizing, cultivating. So we've used a lot of technology. There has been some seed funding through the Department of Ag and we've utilized that for our customers and we've gone from manure spreading with those seed grants to be cut. They've allowed a little bit more as we've tied it to water quality and how these systems improve both the farm operation and the water quality. So precision ag, it's gonna pinpoint everything that's put down in the ground. Seed, fertilizer, manure. It'll record that rate, it'll give you a map that's being recorded on the display inside the tractor. And in that recording, we can also set that rate. So we have full control and a full record of what we've done. So everything's done precisely. So I listened to at least the tail part of Brian's testimony. So we have some operations we're using RTK on. I actually haven't spent a lot of time researching the wifi capabilities on RTK because I know it's not gonna work. So the one RTK system we've sold, we put up a base station and we're using radios. And we have subscription services so we can gain some accuracy. We get another set of satellites. The operator pays in to get those extra satellites. So those have been the workarounds for not having wifi. If we did have more wifi access, we would, it would drop the expense sum and give us one more option to get that accuracy in Vermont. One limitation I have without wifi is these systems are set up just like your laptop, desktop, where everything, a lot of this stuff is internet based. So as far as data management goes, it's a little bit limited there. We could offer remote support to these outer areas rather than a drive up to the farm and trying to figure out how to build a 10 minute issue. We could link in, look at the operator's display. Also data could come to my office so I could get that data moved to wherever I needed to as far as nutrient management planners and things we could do all that wirelessly if we did have better internet. So right now the workaround is USBs. A little bit limited. We're moving forward without it. It would certainly be very helpful with it. So I guess I'll open it up to a question. So what do you send? What's the scale of the agricultural setup? The size of the farm, if you will, that can actually use this type of technology profitably? How small a farm can afford to use this technology and make it work in a profitable way? Sure, but we're a custom operation so we're using the technology on all of our farms whether it be 50 acres up to 1,000 acres. So there's a range there because we're a custom operator and we're subcontracting. Scale-wise to buy your own. Wave funding, that helps a lot but to have it make sense to go out and buy your own 200 plus acres maybe, that's a very rough number. It really depends on how valuable your crop is. So that's more conventional crops. If you had a specialty crop, I could see someone investing out a lot on a smaller scale. We've done smaller scale jobs. We did a hops farm where we grid it out. We did a grid pattern for their hops posts. So that was a 50 acre hops farm that utilized the technology there. We're seeing Precision Ag is a way to kind of enhance some of these specialty markets. We do sunflowers on our farm and we're planning with a subscription-based guidance and then going into cultivating. So we're kind of bringing back the cultivator and we could be more productive than we would otherwise because we're cultivating at five or six miles an hour and not running over crops where before we, we're doing it freehand, you're down around three miles an hour running over some crops. So this is kind of the inverse of that question but since you're selling this product, it sounds like the sales pitch on the product is a return on investment that this is going to save you an X amount of dollars and that this is going to increase your productivity. Such a, what is the context of that? When you're selling the subscription or you're selling the product itself to a farmer, this is going to pay for itself in a year and a half. It's going to pay for itself in five years. I'm a terrible salesman. I really like working with technology. I love working with farmers. You might have some programs. So anyway, it really depends. We had, for example, we had a field this year, a 10-acre field. We didn't have a down pressure system on it in a no-till field and this will be a presentation I'm giving on Friday at the precision ag forum at the Abbey and Sheldon but we had a total crop loss on that field. So that was a $6,000 loss and we had a monitoring system to look at down pressure. That's a $6,000 gain in one field. If you're no-till planting and you've got rows that go like this, an overlap, maybe a 5% loss on every acre just with overlaps and width changes. If you don't have seed tube monitoring and you're, yep, say 10% skips and doubles over two rows it's gonna be a 3% loss of planting performance. So every aspect that you're gonna use it on you're gonna gain 8% from maybe 2% to 100%. Yep, you mentioned a lot of data intensity as far as positioning. Is there other data that's transmitted through the system like precipitation so you can monitor irrigation or runoff, things like that? Not on our systems. Okay. I believe there's technology out there and I'm sure it's gonna, I mean we're on an upward trend so like the Wi-Fi argument is the more the technology advances the more we're gonna, it's gonna head in that direction. We can get around it now but I could see it was going to be a roadblock farther out we go. So it's not to the point where you're not spreading because it's about to rain and wash it all off yet. With one system. No, that's still a, it's not gonna flash a red thing, don't spread it, don't spread it, don't spread it. I can, that's kind of, yeah. So I thought I heard you say that because you don't have access to Wi-Fi you can still make the system work by getting additional satellites, subscribe to additional satellites. How much precision does that give you? You're not gonna get down to the sub inch, you'll need RTK for that and so there's the way that Brian was talking about for RTK and also you could buy a base station and do it with a radio. The subscription service a little less accurate we have achieved about an inch. So for some applications like planting, cultivating it's been pretty good. You wouldn't be able to do drainage tile, you wouldn't be able to do, the cultivating is definitely better with the sub inch versus the subscription. But anyway, in the one to three range. Yeah. Could you clarify what that acronym is, is it RTK? Yes, and I should know this is the dealer. You just have to look that one up. As opposed to RTK, which I've been planning. Real time. Connecticut. Real time, something like that. Yep. So you were talking about Wi-Fi as what you need to make this go. How do you get Wi-Fi? Cell phone service with that? Yep, cell phone contract. We have some, we do run, we move around enough where I have three AT&T hotspots I buy from AT&T, they're in our tractors. So whenever we move around enough, we send our data through that. So it's an AT&T subscription on a Wi-Fi hotspot. But you could do it off your phone if you had a Wi-Fi hotspot to send it. I think the one's Brian talking about, you're gonna need a little bit more expensive, heavier duty, modem, and just a hotspot. For moving data around, you can do that with just any Wi-Fi hotspot. Over the cell phone network, though. That's the cell phone network. So basically, in terms of connectivity, what you need is the cell phone coverage. Absolutely. So the, I get the geographical pinpointing, so you're not doing overlap, but do you also, for like variable rate applications, are you inputting soil type, slope, drainage? Yep, take what you're referring to as subscriptions. And so there's been a little, right now we're field to field. And we're building towards that in Vermont. It's done in other areas of the country. The limitation there has been able to go full circle. So we need, we need harvest maps. And there's been very few people that have harvest maps in Vermont. Our business, we got a seat grant for our customer. We're gonna do a harvest setup, so we'll have our harvest data. And now we can start using the harvest data to build those maps. So we're moving, moving more towards our ability and expertise to do that. I don't know if that answered that question or not. I guess the, what was underlying that question is, so a lot of the information that you're working with is data that you collect and input into your programming. Yes. And then you use the GPS to apply that information. That's correct, effectively. Yep. You can do it, we can predeterminate, put it in, or we can do it like just bunching 4,000 gallons or whatever our rate is. I like the potential to link it to like wind speed for spray applications and you have that red light there. Bosch is short, yeah. So in terms of deep speeds, uploaded download speeds, is there an optimal or minimum or use of this system? I don't know if you answered that question. Okay. I want to be, I'm just going to clarify on the Wi-Fi. So make sure that I understand how this technology. So Wi-Fi, could you run the system off of cable with like hotspots set up? Or do you have to have cellular service? It would have to be cellular because we're out in the middle of a field. So there'd be no way that you could cable that. But you could run like a booster off cable. Yeah, or yeah, if it could reach out far enough to cover up. I'm trying to understand what the technology is that is needed here. If it's internet or if it's satellite. I think with the RTK, and like I said, I'm not an expert on the RTK part of it. I think you would need cellular coverage. But with moving data around, I just need Wi-Fi. Of course this. Yeah, depending on how nerdy you want to get into it right now, we can nerd out later. Yeah, that's true. I could find those answers. If you wanted me to get back to you, I could give you more information back in the contact. I think what we're interested in is what type of technology we have to get into these rural areas in order to enable this type of technology. Is it more cell phone towers? Is it making sure we have fiber that can link into an RTK modem? That's what it's called. That's what this committee is trying to figure out. Keep us out of the field, please. But the technology that we need to help operate better is what we're trying to figure out. Okay. Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thank you very, very much. You're welcome. Bill, were you gonna show us next? So again, we're recording these, Bill, if you could identify yourself for the record and take it away. Oh, sure. My name is Bill Rowell. I am chair of Vermont Dairy Producer Alliance and my brother and I farm in Sheldon. We milk about 900 cows. We crop something like 1,500 acres, 850 acres of corn and 650 acres of grassland. We have a digester on our farm. With a digester, you get interested in things like drag lines. And are you familiar at all with the drag lines? I'm not. As far as how do you spread your manure? And you can do it now with a drag line. And you can pump manure from the manure pit with that drag line as far as two miles away out into a field, okay? And then the tool bar on the tractor, the big $200,000 tractor with the GPS, and the pump that is at the manure pit pumping out to the tractor to the tool bar needs a signal. So what the deal is this, if you use, if you have a smartphone and you only use it to talk, you're not utilizing the smartphone. You're communicating, but you're not using all of the service availability that it would have. If you spend $200,000 on a tractor, and if you have more than a half a dozen of those tractors, it would be nice to use full potential. But the potential requires that signal. So here we are back at the drag line, for example. You pump the manure out to the field and the tractor has a line that is dragging behind it. So you have a transport line going to the field and then you have a line being dragged by the tractor back and forth. And it has shanks that are opening a trench. And the manure is being injected into the trench. So you're reducing the potential for runoff. You don't really have any odor because the dirt falls back over the top of the waste stream once it's injected. You're not losing your ammonia or your nitrogen to the atmosphere. Your neighbors are pleased with it. You're not putting any traffic on the road. Let's see, there are a few other attributes like you're reducing compaction of your soil. It goes on anyway. The fuel usage is about half of what you would spend. And the time is reduced to a fraction. To say half, I'd say probably something like half of the amount of time to put out. If you're gonna put out a million gallons of manure today or in the next two days, you can do it with that machine. You can do it with some precision. But you know, one thing that you need to do when you come to the end of the field, you need to be able to push a button to stop the pump. And if you don't have a reliable signal, you have a mess. And it's expensive. So it may be that, and you know how it works on today's bigger farms, if you have your operation set up in an area and maybe you have two or three other farms that you use for crops across town on this side, and maybe you have another couple of farms in another location down below the Warcraft land, some of them may have the signal and some of them don't. So if you have an area where that you'd like to use that, you say, okay, I'll take the manure from my farm and to a satellite manure pit that will service these three operations. And we can do that with some precision and record it and it works good. I mean, in the interest of the environment and nutrients and the farm, it works for everybody. But it doesn't work if you don't have something as simple as a cell phone signal. So I think that's the real point. Farms are pretty strapped today. We're caught again in the downturn and you all know that and we'll come out of it. We're starting to emerge a bit now. We're starting to show signs of coming back up. But it takes time and I think what you're talking about is if the expectation is that the farms should all do something for communication with that equipment as opposed to the state doing something, then you're not going to get the result you're looking for toward the environment and the farmer's not going to get the utilization of the equipment that it's standard manufacturing now and we can't use it because we don't have the signal. Well, we can use it on this farm but we can't use it over there. It's not very handy at all. I have a friend in Canada. He's near Albert, Vermont. He's in the town of Noyanne, which is next door. He does precision, he does no-till planting. So he said, come right with me. So I get this, it was a John Deere, but I got in anyway. And so he says, we're going to outline the field and it records it, maps it. And then once he outlines the field, he can plant the rest of the field hands-free. He gets to the end of the row and gets set up and then as he starts, he pushes his button and it goes automatic and you sit there and you visit and you put it on the field with this big planter behind it. And I said, where's your signal coming from? You guys up here in Canada, you got some good signal. He said, I have a poor signal here. He said, I'm using the signal off the fertilizer feed dealer in Champlain, New York. And he said, without that, I couldn't do it, I wouldn't do it. Is that RTK ringing? So you think of the progress that we've made with technology. You think of the things that we can't do and that we do in certain places with technology, but let me conclude by saying this. Imagine if you were on the moon and you didn't have something as simple as a signal and it meant not only your livelihood, but your life. It's pretty important that farmers have some kind of communication, reliable communication. Sky, I wonder if no-till farming is made easier by having that signal and having that precision equipment. Sure it is. Sure it is. Much easier. I mean, it's like driving a vehicle with a standard transmission or driving a vehicle with an automatic transmission on cruise control. You don't have to think. Really, you just sit right here. Right, and no-till needs to be more precise because of just how it is. Well, because of, for one, the expense of things today. You can't really afford them to stay. But also, with the amount of regulation that's focused at the ag community today, you want to make sure you know what you're doing. Yes, ma'am? So a question for you, thinking of that, is the degree of alliance that you- Yes, Vermont Deere producer alliance. So when you are trying to solve this problem, of no cell service, are you talking to the cell companies themselves? Are you, are there any places that are coming up with innovative ways to work with cell companies for agriculture? You talk with the cell companies and there are certain areas that it doesn't work well. For example, we live in Highgate, our farm in Sheldon on the Highgate line. So we're close to the border and we have farms closer to the border than our main farm. And the problem with the signal there is you have to talk to the Canadians because now you're interfering with their hair space. Doesn't seem to be a problem with them crowding their signal down this way. But if you don't have a sign off from the Canadians for your signal that you're trying to utilize so that you can make your equipment operate, they can charge you a penalty. I mean, you're in violation of FCC regulations. So that's a problem too. So it would be much easier if we had some cell service. I guess just to put a little finer point on it and it sounds like maybe you don't have this answer, but we're trying to think of all of the ways that we can solve this problem in rural Vermont. And I'm just wondering if you, your association has had any luck or conversations talking with the cell companies about maybe innovative ways to solve this problem or ways that it's happening in other states. No, we haven't solved the problem. Well, no, no. Just if you've been able to talk with them about it. And we haven't been able to address the problem in a reasonable manner, economic wise or service wise. I mean, if you have unlimited funding, you can do almost anything today. I don't see anybody in this sort of claim in that. That's not at this end of the table. You know what I'm saying? Mike, did you have a question? Yeah, I was just wondering who finds you if you accessed the Canadian systems of Canadians or the FCC? Well, I'm not sure and I hope not to find out, but I assume that they both are going to talk and how much the penalty would be and who imposes it. I suppose they'd have to collaborate, but I'm not sure. On our base station, we had to get an FCC license to run at a certain frequency. I don't see any answer to that. To run at a certain frequency, yes. But if you run it and it's interfering with the Canadians, then now you're in a different state. So you're talking about interference with the signal, with the Canadian signal, as opposed to actually accessing a Canadian signal to do the correct. Okay, and he's right, the transmitter person. I was just reading a little bit about that and depending on what level you're transmitting, you may or may not need it. I'm sure that was a great good license. My question was, do you need, is it looking for alternatives like Representative Ciccioli was talking about? Ideally 24-7, 365 is what you're looking for, but are there, for you, is an interruptible system? Would that work? I mean, times when you need it, times when you don't. We would need it much after the manure spreading ban is imposed. So after, in the winter? So from, let's say from December 1st through April 1st, I don't think that it would be of much value to us. To expand on that, are you talking like nighttime operations? I'm just wondering, are you guys reading on my phone? Oh, we plan, we plan all the time. Bill, you mentioned your methane digester. Yeah. Does that require any type of technology through cable or Wi-Fi or cell service? No, we're hooked up on the phone lines so that that's hardwired so we can, we have people in Pennsylvania and we have people in Wisconsin watching what we're doing with the digester engines. And also, I should say, and also in Portland who are bringing up hours set up. You just, do you have DSL to the, is that the technology for the digester? Thank you, Bill. Yes, thank you. Thank you. So I have a little video for you to help you better understand what you've been hearing about all morning. We might have, maybe we should have done this first. We might have cleared this up for you a little bit. So, and I'll apologize, this is green iron so I'm a John Deere supporter. I apologize to Bill and the chance he had to hold his breath and bite his tongue to sit in one of these. Yes, it's your product description. Okay, perfect, perfect, okay. So I have two things I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you this quick little video which is obviously a John Deere promotional video but it does kind of outline some of the technology and it will show it to you in use, which is great. And then I'm gonna show you a listing of some of the products that they offer and what they know farmers think is important. And you'll see some of those listed on almost any one of their product is very quick reconnection. So everywhere in rural America, dropping signal is a big problem and what's really important in these tractors is that you reconnect as quickly as possible. So that's one of the big features that they offer. So we'll see if this goes. We're in precision spraying technology. Introducing the next generation of sprayers from John Deere, the LDR4038 sprayers. You're looking at the latest advances in technology all fully integrated to deliver the most performance and cover more anchors in your day. Everything you see here has been designed for peak efficiency and precision. John Deere section control, for example, lets you spray only the areas you want. Using TPS information, it automatically turns boom sections on and off around headlands and waterways, eliminating costly overlaps. With John Deere section control, you'll save input costs. You'll help boost prop yields by assuring on target application and you'll help operators apply product more accurately without manual adjustments. Pre-guided system delivers amazing pass-to-pass accuracy greatly reducing driver strain while reducing your input costs. You can easily maintain a consistent boom height above the ground too. With the BoomTrack Pro option, you can boost your application precision from the comfort of your cab. That means fewer adjustments over hilly terrain and greater confidence of spraying precision. It's instant field specific, on-the-go weather information to help operators make the most of their application effectiveness. All this precision spraying technology is fully integrated and accessible through the GreenStar 32630 display with easy push button control. These new sprayers come standard with JD Link. Your new sprayer will send real-time updates to your laptop, desktop, or mobile device with information on how it's operating so you can better manage your operation, your staff, and your costs. You can also check on your machine diagnostics with remote display access which gives owners, managers, and even dealers the ability to view the operator's display remotely. Problems with your machine and start working on answers without any technicians travel expense to your location, that's what you get with Service Advisor Robot to use AgLotchy. It's an automated work order management system that helps you manage and improve the productivity of your entire fleet. So I'm just gonna stop there because now we're talking about back-end stuff more on the tractor itself and so on, which is important and that is great. Like literally if your dealer could call you and say, hey, you've got a wheel bearing going or whatever it is or you've got some problem in a sprayer, it'll notify you right away and they'll be able to come and get you. And then the next thing I'm gonna show you, so here are some of the things. So see, rapid recovery feature can quickly reacquire lost signals. So obviously that's something that everybody thinks about, they're all worried about. So this is a variety of different products that they offer for guidance of your machine. So these are all just basically software and hardware packages that you can download onto your onboard computer. But it talks about things like dealing with shaded conditions, things you might not think about. When you're in the shade with your sprayers and so on, obviously seeing things is different. It talks about hilly terrain in Vermont and a lot of places you don't have a good sight line, like normally if you're going across the field you can look at one tree and try to go straight. If you're going up a hill, you might not be able to see that over the top and so this because it's precision guided can keep you within that one inch or one and a half inch of where your last row was. So it's not just important for a fertilizer application or pesticide application. It's really important for planting. And then again, this machine will also remember your planting so that when you go to harvest it knows exactly where to be to harvest exactly correctly. You know, we have those big corn as you've seen them with a big teeth basically and each corn stalk has to fit into one of those teeth. You get a little bit off, it's not so helpful. But so here's a whole, and so as you get down, you get closer and closer, you go from six inch accuracy to one inch accuracy and RTK stands for real time kinematic, kinematic, which is a satellite guidance system is what that actually stands for. And so all of these do use it and some of these will require subscription services and so on. One of, you know, they look at reduce your overlap which means that you're not going to be spraying a fertilizer in the same place twice but you don't want because that's wasted. And in Vermont, most farms of any size, you're doing soil sampling, you're required to do soil sampling, you're importing all those soil samples, all of that input goes to your, if you're a smaller farm, you have a custom operator come in, if you're a larger farm, you probably have your own equipment. That all goes to your, you know, on the Lagos Brothers Farm, it goes to our custom applicator. We don't have this stuff ourselves. The custom applicator comes, it's all downloaded and when they go out onto our field, their booms are turning on and off and individual sprayers are turning on and off depending on what we need and that goes not only for fertilizer and pesticides, it also goes for manure handling as well. So when somebody goes out and sprays, they know where they're spraying and where they're supposed to be on that field. And some of our fields only, you know, the Northwest Quadrant of a field actually needs manure this year because our phosphorus levels or nitrogen levels are all fine, so we don't need that. And so everything is just a lot more precise with this kind of technology and it was important for us to come to your committee and let you know that because I think most people don't think of farms and this level of precision that is out there, but with regulations the way they are today, we have to be very, very precise in how we're using our inputs, not only to remain economically viable but to remain within the law, within our regulatory standards of what we are allowed to apply to fields. Other ways that we are using technology on the farm, for instance, you go by farms and you'll see those plastic curtains for the vast majority of farmers. Those are connected to thermometers and they go up and down based on temperature because cows like it to be cold, like 52 degrees is kind of ideal for a cow. They're ruminants, they produce a lot of heat. They don't like the heat at all. Fan systems, mister systems inside of farms are all automatically controlled. You don't have to go like, well, I'm hot, let's go turn on the mister system. Those things are all pretty much automated on farms today. For people who use robotic milkers, those robotic milkers are always talking to the cell phone of the operator because the operator doesn't have to be there. But if something's going on, even if it's something with a cow that's going on, a cow that normally comes in and stands still like that robotic milker will remember every single cow based on its transponder when it comes in, it'll remember her and her level of activity when she's getting milked. So today she comes in and she's stomping her feet or moving around a little bit. That operator can know if you want to, you can say, tell me these kinds of inputs. And it'll let you know there's a reason that cows agitated, she doesn't feel well. There's something going on. Cows are very competitive. She could be literally being bullied. They have a lot of bullies in a dairy herd. One of the early technologies was cows wore a transponder in their ear. They'd go up to a feeder. The feeder would open, she'd walk in, she'd get fed. And so this was like this very precise technology was supposed to be a great way to feed your cow and they couldn't overeat, et cetera. Well, then what we discovered over time is on a lot of farms, there'd be a bully cow. And some non-bully cow, some submissive cow would go in, the food would drop down and the bully cow would just beater and then she'd back out to get out of the way and the bully cow would go in and eat the leftover food from the other cow. And so we noticed some really big fat cows and some kind of getting skinnier cows out there. So we've tried a lot of different types of technology on farms and some work and some don't, but it's been really, really interesting. We use, some farms use extended day lighting. As it gets darker here, the more light it is, the more your cows are gonna get up and eat and drink and obviously that improves their production. You want cows, cows wear pedometers now. A lot of cows wear pedometers. Almost for the opposite reason that humans do. We don't want them to walk around a lot. We want them to be lazy and just eating and drinking and then lying down and chewing your cud and then getting up and being milked. We don't want any extra activity out there. And so those things can also let you know, this cow's walking around a lot. Like she's agitated and she could be in heat. It's time to breed her. There are reasons that a cow, cows are huge, huge habitual creatures. They wanna do the same thing every day. You move a fence, you move something. It can throw your entire day off for a whole bunch of cows because they don't like anything changing. Like everything the same every single day. And so those, something like wearing some kind of a pedometer can really tell you a lot about how your cow is feeling and what's going on. So that did talk about the weather conditions. They talked about that. And so the newest technology is that you punch in, these are the products that I'm using. Those products all have a safety label. Those safety labels can tell you that you can't apply with certain wind speeds. You need a certain level of humidity. And also as you're watching your weather, certain products, like we hear some about life is safe, breaks down in sunlight, but you need a certain amount of sunlight for it to work. And so if cloudy weather is coming in, it can tell you that. And it'll say, you've got two hours left to be using this product and then you're gonna get much less of its effectiveness because of a changing weather condition. Just to let you know, this is a big deal for farmers. The Franklin, the Grand Isle farmers group is holding a precision ag meeting this Friday. It's an all day meeting up at the Abbey. And this is exactly what they're talking about. And this is what farmers are really focusing on. We, in order to compete, we're competing in a global marketplace. We need to follow and be able to use these technologies. So it is really, really important that we're allowed to do these kinds of things and anything that Vermont can do to help. And I can tell you, you call Verizon or you call AT&T and you say, I'm a farmer group in Vermont. I mean, whatever. Look at our map. The map says you have coverage. Well, I can guarantee you, we don't have coverage. So it is a big issue, but trust me, they don't really care about some dairy group in Vermont calling them up. But even if you call your local Verizon store and what they'll tell you is we don't control what towers are going up. And we don't know any new towers are coming in or, you know, they don't, it's just not on their radar really. Self-occurrence. Yes. That's what we need. Yeah. Yeah. And so a lot of this RTK is actually is satellite. And so you can have satellite phones and all that kind of stuff. But it is, you know, as you've heard today, you buy those subscriptions and they are expensive. So it would be a lot better if we had cell phone coverage and then you would still buy the subscription, but you wouldn't need the satellites. Satellites are going to be a lot less precise than if you had local cell phone coverage and you could use the GPS guidance systems like you want to. Thank you, Marce. Yes. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Hi, I'm Meg Nelson. I represent Northeast Idaho Business and Feed Alliance. And my husband and I have a dairy farm in St. Alton's. To start, I'm going to show you a video that our farm in collaboration with another farm made with Must Be the Milk two years ago that demonstrates a lot of the technologies that we use currently. And a lot of the ag industry is really taking on to make milk. Old Rusty tracked your wealth. On this farm, it's not the case. Yeah, technology is a big part of, you know, I think, successful farming. Every cow wears a collar. We get all this information. There are three cameras across the farms that allow us to see which cows need more food or when cows are running out of feed so that we can manage them. A couple of cows. Cows is a GPS auto-track system on the tractor. It allows us to do more with less. So as the tractor drives itself, it can make sure that every roll of corn is essentially perfectly spaced so that it drastically reduces the weight. So one way we keep track of what we're putting on the land. Yesterday, our farm actually exports four times the power that it consumes. At the foundation of what we do is quality and help and conquer the first and foremost stewards of the land. And we're proud of that. What is it? That's cool. All right, so those are some of the technologies... All right, so those are some of the technologies... All right, so those are some of the technologies... I can't cancel. I can't cancel. That we're using from drones to milking harvesters that are all automated, robotic, calf feeding. We have a methane digester. Those all need a communication platform to speak sometimes to each other and to the farmer. So one thing we find, we have a lot of dead zones that will be on our smartphones looking at cows and then bam, we're lost connection and we have to wait or drive to find a better spot. So just being connected is gonna be really important for the rural communities of Vermont because that's where our agribusiness is happening. And as we are trying to do more with less and constantly honing in and becoming more and more precise and using less water and less inputs, we're also improving our output. So some of the things that farmers are doing are very beneficial to Vermont and we need to be connected in order to continue doing what we're doing. I'm just curious about the different connectivity applications that you have going into your farm. You clearly mentioned cell phone and spottingness and the importance of that. Do you have a broadband connection coming into your property? We do, that is just through Comcast. It's expensive but when we're out in the fields, when my husband's planting corn all night and such, he'll be out there and he'll be trying to log in with his smartphone to whether check on a cow or we have real time milking data. So we'll have a, it's basically a virtual parlor where the cows are getting milked and something might be going wrong and he's getting an alarm but he can't access the computer to fix that so the milkers can keep milking. And it's more of a cell phone issue. That is more of a cell phone issue, yeah. I would say that broadband is, it can be really expensive for rural communities and getting it out there and finding good quality. That will be something to address as well but for us, really cell phone coverage is a really good one. So you said you're up in St. Olm's, right? How far outside the city limits as you call it? We're about five miles from the city. We're right in the bay, right close to Macquam shore road and we're pretty close to Canada as well. A lot of our fields are actually up in Swanton and we will roam and get dinged on our cell phone bill. We'll go up substantially when that happens. We have called AT&T about that and they just say, oh well, Canada's towers are stronger, sorry. So we actually have plans on our cell phones that cost us an extra $10 a month to be able to roam if needed when that happens. So it's not $300 a month. And Verizon actually doesn't charge for that. That is something we deal with the same thing anywhere in the northern part of Verizon will not charge you to ding off of Rogers in Canada. We look into switching and where we are, we've had employees that have had Verizon that had a little harder of a time with coverage, so we stuck with AT&T for now, but we were always shopping around to find the best connection. Sam, would you have a question? Yeah, I was going to say, I thought there was some sort of FCC rule, like if you didn't actually cross the border they were supposed to refund that. We called and they always ding you. Yeah, it's expensive. We wish that was the case. Plus I think when this originally happened we moved to the area five years ago and the first couple of times they kind of waived it, but then they see that we're calling all the time and having this issue and so it ended up just being more logical to put the extra plan on our cell phones. If we have time, this is totally unrelated to connectivity, but it's about the digester. Thank you. So what happens to the waste from the digester? You brought it? So after the menorah's digested, it's separated. The solids come out at about 35% dry matter and we use that underneath the cows as bedding because it is cooked, it's pretty, a lot of the pathogens are killed and it's a very comfortable and great closed loop system. And then the slurry that's left over is spread onto our fields. This year we are actually investing in a drag line like Phil was talking about and we'll be able to spread quickly, less compaction and then getting a really accurate rate on the fields. And what happens to the bedding material? It's just recycled it, whatever. So it's in the stalls where the cows are laying and after so long the cows will kind of kick it out and it will be put back into the menorah system and it will just keep going in the loop. Okay, so far this has been the most interesting hearing. It's true. We want to trade, we want to trade base. So do we. We don't give you L's and L's, we don't give you anything. So this is what happens when you talk to people who know they're good people. So we're talking about infrastructure and you know when infrastructure or the lack of infrastructure first really hit me between the eyes was when we put our digester in, we were 3.2 miles from the substation on single phase and we had to build 3.2 miles of three phase power lines. We had to make $80,000 a mile. Geez. For the privilege of producing power. And that's when you say, good God, how did we get caught like this? But that's just a good example of inadequate infrastructure and the cell phone service is no different. We can't fully utilize what we're trying to do with the equipment that's capable of doing it. So we need some help. May I? You may. You know, I would just know in the case of the electrical lines, you had the option to build those. No, that's true. Yeah. That's correct. As opposed to cell service. Don't have any. You can build your own cell tower if you want. You gotta get somebody to do it though. So thank you very much for joining us. No, thanks. So next we're gonna hear from Jeff. You were scheduled for 11.30. Is there any chance we could hear from you a little bit earlier? Yeah, okay. So why don't we take literally a five minute break just so people can kind of reorient themselves here? But why don't we start with you in five minutes, Jeff, where that works? For the record, I'm the Boston Director of External Affairs and Government Affairs at Consolidated Communications. Thank you very much for the time today, Mr. Chairman. It's good to see everybody. That's hard to follow up on that. I know a lot of those folks, so it's always good to see those folks in here. I wanted to just start. I actually have four things, just kind of topics that I wanted to review today. And those are basically faster than an access around Vermont and investment. I thought those were two good things to put together. Reliable connectivity, 911 calling, just to kind of review that real quick. A tent of customer service and make ready timeliness and transparency. Just a few things I wanted to talk about. But I didn't know if anyone from the committee had any questions for me to start with, or I know that on the calendar it said Universal Service Fund, so I just wanted to make sure we covered what you wanted to, because, as you know, I can talk. And I didn't want to run out of time before we got to what you wanted to address. Generally speaking, some of the things that we're focusing on this week and next week relate to the Universal Service Fund. And one of the things that we're considering as part of a broadband bill is potentially some more revenue coming into the state from that resource. So that's why that's kind of high on our list, but you're certainly welcome to address the other things as well. Sure, and I just want to let you know, I would support the half percent increase for the four years on Universal Service Fund. I know this is something that we had last year, the year before, that hasn't changed in our support of that. So I just wanted to at least address that in the beginning. I also have just show and tell, just real quick if you can give me a second. There's copper and fiber, and I know we talk a lot about that kind of in the committee as it relates to providing service, but I kind of wanted to just pass these around if you guys wanted to look at them real quick, the difference between the two. I can talk while you guys are looking at this, but this is a copper cable. This is a hundred-bare copper cable. It's got 200 wires in it. You can see all of the copper network was built with the resilience. We've got metal coating around the copper. We've got thick plastic coating. That's why when a tree falls, you don't necessarily go out of service. That's why you may see a tree on a copper line and it may look like a V, but people are still in service and maybe on the ground and people are still in service. The way that we built this and the way that it was manufactured, just be careful on this end. It's a little sharp, so if you want to kind of look at it. This is a 12 fiber drop, and it has 12 fibers in it, individual fibers. It's called a ribbon, and then that just gives you a better idea. Most fibers, just so you know, when you're looking at them on the pole, probably have 72 or 144 of these in there. This just happens to have 12 for illustrated purposes. I just wanted to show you guys if you wanted to take a picture. What's the comparative carrying capacity of those two? The copper has a, well, the way that we built the network, it's built for Northern and Storm heavy loading. So the way you ultimately build the network is you have two poles, you have brackets on the poles, and you run a 10 millimeter metal strand, a very thick metal strand that can hold a lot of weight. Then you take a metal lashing, and you take the copper, and you lash that to the metal strand. So the metal strand is actually what's holding everything together. And it has, you know, extremely high loading. I meant that I didn't mean physical load. Oh, I'm sorry. You see, engineer, sorry. Okay, fair enough. Transmission capacity. Oh, transmission capacity. No, that's the right one. Oh, no, that's a great one. The fiber, almost unlimited. It depends the electronics that you put on the end of it. So each of those fibers, even today, every order we have fiber, you could get a carrier Ethernet service. It's our carrier class for businesses at a 10 gig level for internet service or point-to-point connectivity or multi-point connectivity. Are these equivalent? No, absolutely not. No, the 100 pair copper cable can serve 100 separate customers. The fiber, the 12 fiber that you have there, you know, could potentially serve 500 customers. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much. I think we get it there. So just, I wanted to start with just internet access as we were talking about the universal service fund and investment. One thing that is the reality of the world that we live in is we're constantly building. So just, you know, this is not a static environment every single day we're out. We're building fiber. We're extending fiber further closer to customers. We're building fiber to the prime. We are building remote terminals. We're building more electronics. And that's kind of on the outside. Inside, we have a humongous network. The whole PSTN, when people say the PSTN, that's what we've run. We have a whole network with multiple gig connections connecting our 90 central offices in Vermont to make sure everything runs. And we also have different carriers that are in our buildings. Everybody kind of connects to the PSTN. So we've got the entire network to maintain and we're out investing and we're building and we're constantly expanding. One of the things we did in 2018 as it relates to broadband expansion is we, this was an internal initiative. We increased speeds to 100,000 addresses just in Vermont. 500,000 between Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. So as Consolidated came in, took over obviously the company, this was one of our initiatives. You know, with a new company is to build out more broadband. So we did that. We're also obviously building out with our CAF funds. We've got Vermont connectivity grants. We have a lot of projects related and our own investments where we're building. I know I think I mentioned this before, but I think it's worth kind of just reiterating as this build out continues, we've done a lot since 2011 in Vermont, over $100 million in investments. We've done over 785 remote terminal build outs. That's fiber to an area out in a remote area and fiber to electronics. And the copper that actually runs to your house is connected to those electronics. 650 of those are actually in rural Vermont. They might be in downtown Barnett, but still as you kind of think about the rural areas, you know, I included kind of those downtown rural areas and that's 650. So we've extended, we've built 2,600 miles of fiber since 2011 just in Vermont. A lot of that fiber, whether it's connecting a cell tower, which happens to be in rural areas, or connecting to remote terminals, or connecting to our customers or businesses, all of that fiber is capable of providing service to customers. So it's not just central office to central office connecting our network. All the fiber we have out there is capable of providing anything to any of our customers. So we continue to build out. And as we're talking about speeds, since 2016, the technology that we're using, people, it's DSL, but it's VDSL to technology. This is very high bit rate DSL. It's still distance sensitive. It still has that last mile that runs over the copper, you know, like we talked about, but we're able to get speeds up to 80 meg download out of a lot of those. The newer thing since 2016, we're able to get 100 bank download. It's 40 meg upload. I know the upload is very important also. So these are 80 by 20, 100 by 40. Now, some of the stuff that we're building in our central offices also allows for fiber to the prime deployments. We have seven fiber of the prime deployment projects going on right now. One was completed in South Burlington. We have two in Morrisville, Duxbury. We have one in Essex. We have going on. So we have this. So as we relate to new build outs or new buildings or multi-dwelling units, or if we're out there and we end up having to potentially replace the copper that's out there, we're looking at it at all angles, all technologies, what makes sense. So, oh, yeah. Just a quick question. Does South Burlington and Essex projects that you've got, is that replacing copper? No, that's actually brand new developments. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. So ultimately, like I said, I just wanted to just illustrate, it's a very, very dynamic building out there. And we're always building and investing. We have a commitment based on the consolidated acquisition to reinvest 14% of our Vermont revenues every year, 2018, 19, and 20, back into the Vermont network. I can't tell you that exact amount as it relates to that revenue, but I can tell you in 2018, we exceeded that revenue goal by about $3 million. So Jeff, you mentioned building 2,600 miles of fiber. Yeah. And I'm just wondering is, and you said not all of it is to backhaul. Correct. That's a great point. So, but I'm wondering about backhaul and overbuilding and, you know, so I hear you have a lot of fiber and VTEL has a lot of fiber. VTRANCE has fiber and Delco has fiber. And it seems like there's a lot of redundancy. And I'm just wondering how much do you lease from other people? How much do you lease to other people? How much do you just build so you have your own and don't want to mess with other people? Can you address that? That's a great question. The, as it relates to Velco, Velco on their high power lines is usually all by themselves. So they have a lot of fiber but they have it on their own facilities. So, you know, relates to those. There's other companies just to give you an idea of a first light big company here, Century Link, who purchased level three, first light purchase sovereign net. So even have more and more people on the poles with fiber. So between 2011 and now, for the most part, we build our own fiber. We have the infrastructure we go out in when we lash to our existing plant where we need to build. We have a program for the Vermont Department of Public Service. We do lease some dark fiber. I mean, I can explain if you guys wanted to know what dark fiber is, but we lease some dark fiber from the Department of Public Service. We do have companies that come to us that ask us to lease them dark fiber. Wireless care, a lot of different companies. You know, we're kind of, because if you end up having fiber in your location here, point A and point B, and you have the electronics to connect on both, you can do whatever you want to do over that fiber. You don't have to purchase, you're purchasing the dark fiber, but it's unlimited. You can do whatever you're, and it will allow you to do. So as a general practice, we don't lease a lot of dark fiber from other companies because we have a ton of fiber in the state already. When it makes business sense, we are certainly in those conversations. So as we kind of get going on the questions here, I want to be cognizant of the amount of time, but Mike, that's kind of great. So I'm not too familiar with what kind of speech, consolidated communications provides in the Shelburne area. I would imagine that when you get into the Shelburne village, it's pretty good. I have constituents who are in Charlotte, but are still served by a consolidated. They're right on the edge of the boundary between Waysfield, Champlain Valley Telecom, and consolidated, and they got lousy service. They got four, four one DSL basically. What does it take to get them better service? Well, it would potentially take different electronics. We may have to build more fiber closer to them to put in electronics or some fiber of the prime probably solution at that point. So there's a couple of options. And my question really is, how do you make that happen? Well, you have to balance, you have to balance the entire business. As we're out building broadband, we're also an operating company. So we're out doing AOT projects. Last year we did 8,000 hours of non-reversible AOT work. We're doing make ready. We're doing installation and repair for our customers. So what you look at is you look at what do we have for a bulk workload? What does the entire workload look like? Where are we building out? We have commitments like our CAF two commitments. We have commitments with the Department of Public Service to build out broadband. So you look at all your commitments and then you figure out, okay, what can you do? What can you realistically do in a year? Also, we meet with towns. For example, the town of Shelburne, if they wanted to meet, we meet with towns, talk to them about what they have for service, where they have it, where the fiber is, and where they have concerns about certain areas. And then how do we work together potentially in a public-private partnership to solve for that issue? So one of the problems may be that since these clients of yours are in Charlottes, Shelburne's service may be very good. The town of Shelburne doesn't have any interest in actually getting consolidated to serve the people in Charlottes who are just over the border but are connected through consolidated through the telephone lines. I have just a good example. It's a recent example. I met with the town of Barnett a couple months ago and it wasn't the town, it was actually townspeople in a room like this. They made pizza that was great. And we talked about that exact same issue. The town of Barnett has good service. The outskirts on Morrison Road and Strobridge Road, there was no service in that area. So we had a very specific conversation on how do we fix this problem? And what we ended up doing, this is actually very interesting. I mentioned public-private partnerships. We were gonna apply jointly for a grant, a connectivity grant from the Department of Public Service. The town, these folks in this community got together and they raised money that could ultimately support the build out if we're awarded that grant. So that's the first time we've been involved in that. We've been through this grant process maybe four times but we really used a grassroots effort to say, okay, we're gonna bid for it, we're gonna put in for it. But if we can get help on the, if we can get some financial assistance, it just makes the case look better. So it really was on the grassroots side. We applied, they have not awarded those yet so we're still waiting to hear if we were awarded that. But it's those types of conversations when you get to those areas that I think have to be really on that level. And for example, if those folks wanted to meet and kind of do the exact same thing we did in Barnett, those are the conversations that we're absolutely involved in. And this actually is kind of a good segue, kind of takes me off of where I was going but a little bit of a good segue. We are working at our Vice President of Products working on this. We're working with the town of Chesterfield, New Hampshire right now on a broadband bonding project. They actually put some legislation in New Hampshire last year that allows for more municipal broadband bonding. And Chesterfield is the first one who's kind of getting to the point where they put out an RFP. We worked with them, responded to it. We won the RFP. This is the entire town of Fiber of the Pram. It has to go in front of the towns folks on voting day. So they have to vote for it, which makes sense. But ultimately, it's those kind of discussions that we're looking to hopefully replicate. If we can make that a transferable model, that's great to actually go out and have these other conversations. Every town will be a little bit different because every town is different. But if you have the basic bond model together, then you have the tool to get you to the next conversation. So that's something that we're doing right now too. Can you give me a name of somebody to contact for that kind of conversation? Yeah, yeah, actually, I would be happy to. I do that as my side job. Okay. It's got to do. Oh, I'm just going to ask again for a definition of dark fiber. Oh, okay. So I'm sure it's been explained before, but I don't have it in my head. Oh, no, it's actually, so fiber, you put light on fiber. And so usually when it's working, actually there's light going through the fiber. So then we're putting the light on it. Dark fibers, if you have a company, you know, I'm trying to find an example. But if you have a company who has a business in Essex, and they also have a business in Jericho, not that far apart. And they just want to share data between those two different offices. They could lose dark fiber. They could take one or two fibers that we are not using. So it's just unused fiber. It's unused fiber. They light it up with their own equipment and their own data. But we're just giving them fibers that are just dark, that have to have them light up. So lit fiber means when the service provider puts the equipment on the end and they can select a particular light frequency to control the amount of throughput and so forth. Dark fiber means, hey, here's a piece of fiber. You get both ends of it and do whatever you want with it. So it means that fiber can never be used for anything else. So you've got to lease the entire fiber capacity. But it also means that your entire way of control of what equipment you put on either end and what you sent through it. And as long as we're asking elementary questions, the capacity of one strand of fiber is? It's limited only to the equipment and lasers that emit the light on the ends of that fiber. We're up to 30 terabytes per strand. It's a, I mean, it is, it really is unlimited. It's much light as you can put over it. Yeah. Incarnate. Incarnate. And yes. Thank you. Thank you. So that was kind of my review on investments and internet access. Right now we have 60 current projects that we're working on in Vermont. Most of those are related to either VDSL deployment or, like I mentioned, those five of the current deployments that we have going on now. I did want to jump into just reliability, reliable connectivity, 911 calling. I think it's important, obviously, just to start off, if you called Consolidated today, for example, and you were looking for repair on your residential phone or business phone, whatever that may be, we have a schedule that we would be out there by close business tomorrow. You know, that's usually, as it relates to our requirements and as it relates to our resources and the amount of trouble tickets we have currently, that's our response time. Now, six months ago, that was not our response time. We actually did experience unacceptable wait times for repair and installation. Hence, we have a service quality investigation going on right now with the Public Facility Commission. We're working very closely with the Department of Public Service and the PUC to kind of work through that process. But I did kind of want to bring that up. You know, one of the things is, we have, we had a collective bargaining agreement that we were working through in August, just real quick on that, to allow flexibility to handle those peak workload periods. So that's been, you know, that was successfully negotiated with our IBW and CWA unions. That gives us a flexibility to bring in third-party resources, you know, from different companies, like contractors basically, to help with those peak workloads. Another thing that we're doing though is we're hiring additional technicians here in Vermont. So we've got that already in the mix that's what's going on today. And these are, yes, how far, oh. Just a quick question, the response time, is that for telephone service, for DSL, for both? For both right now. Yep, absolutely. How many technicians are you hiring? That would be 18. And what will that put you at, as compared to five years ago, in terms of overall technicians? I don't have that number compared to five years ago. Will it be more or less over the same? That, the overall number of full-time employees, as it relates to technicians, might be less, but with the flexibility, for example, we have over 33rd party contractors in today. When you look at the net number, it would ultimately be more. So, just to confirm, I think what I just heard you say is you're hiring 18, you're not exactly sure if that will be more or less, but you think it may be less than what you had five years ago, after you hire 18, is that right? Not counting our third party contractor resources. But I don't have those numbers specifically, just to be clear. Now, so, service quality, obviously, like I said, those unacceptable wait times, we've gone through an entire operational reconstruction, where we have new leadership through the entire operational workforce. And during this time, we did bring in folks, we do have the ability to move some of our technicians from other states. We had folks in from Maine, we had folks in from New Hampshire, we had folks in from Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Minnesota. We were bringing in folks, because one of the things that happened, and just to kind of throw this out there, and transparency, is once the contract was ratified, we were able to bring in third party contractors. Well, that was around beginning of September, late August in that beginning of September. Well, then you have a couple of hurricanes that happen. And sometimes these contractor resources, there's a limited amount go to the storm recovery areas. That's why we're bringing in additional resources from other states to assist with that. But since that period of time, we've made steady progress, reducing the volumes back to normal workload volumes. Today, for example, in the entire state of Vermont, we have about 116 voices in DSL, trouble tickets in the state. We actually had made really good progress till the end of November, when the southern part of the state got hit with a really bad storm. That put us back several weeks of storm recovery, getting things working. But like I said, within a few weeks after that storm, and we've recovered from that, our service quality as it relates to response times has been at normal levels during this period of the year. The PUC and the Consolidate just settled a settlement of stipulation in the relationship to the E-9-1-1. Yep, of an open docket, yep. Can you address that a little bit? Sure. So back in January of 2016, there was an issue where the 9-1-1, there was a network issue, to keep it a high level, where calls to 9-1-1 were not rooted the appropriate way. No calls were lost to 9-1-1. 9-1-1 has several different paths that it takes when you make a 9-1-1 call to get to the call taker. So in November of 2016, the PUC opened up an investigation related to that incident. And what we did is we ended up working closely with the Department of Public Service to go through, they hired an external consultant, and we work very closely with all of those folks to go through what happened, go through the entire, these are experts going through the entire network. We actually had three face-to-face meetings like this with the consultants and the Department of Public Service to review what happened in those situations. The... Because there were two others that rolled into it. Yep. The same investigation, right? Yes. There was, and let me see if I can get these right, there was March 2018, because we're in 2019, and November of 2017. So there were two issues. One of those was related to a network change that we had made. We're actually building in some redundancy but it's robo-calling, but those were added into that. And as we work through with the Department of Public Service and their consultants, you go through the process, they end up submitting a report related to everything that they've reviewed with us and recommendations to whether it's labeling of something or record keeping over with tickets, they really just kind of put out what their recommendations would be to make sure that they were comfortable, that we had made the changes. So things like that wouldn't happen again. So that report came in, worked with the Department of Public Service on a stipulation agreement, which includes some of the network that we have as it relates to the transmission of 911 calls and voice calls in general. We're building a new network behind the network that we have today. So installing that redundancy that wasn't there? Yep. So ultimately, this will be the ultimate network that when we transition all of our legacy voice services, I guess for the like of a better term, over to more of a voice over IP platform, this is the network that will ultimately carry the 911 traffic and a lot of other traffic also. And so ultimately, like I just wanted to kind of bring that up, that is something we're working with the Department of Public Service. We have worked on it very hard. It's been the major focus of the company in improving our service quality, hiring more technicians, getting the third party resources here, and really increasing our response to our customers, because really, that's really what matters. Jennifer, I have a question. Sure. So in regards to the copper versus the fiber, let's say you have a low-bed go-through with the excavator on it, it wipes out the line. What are we talking about for differences, repairs, and can there be joining of the two, or is it only copper and only fiber? I mean, how does that work? The only time that you can join them is if you have electronics in between them. So you have to have something there to convert that optical fiber signal over to an electrical copper signal. So if you have something in between it, that's where it all joins together. But if you're on a pole and an excavator rips your stuff down, there's benefits and challenges of both, right? So if it rips down the copper, you're gonna go out there, you're gonna run a new copper between the two locations. You're gonna cut it off here, cut it off here, run a new copper. You're gonna take every one of those wires and splice it into its corresponding wire. So that can be more time consuming, but you're gonna do all of that in the air. You're gonna have technicians and bucket trucks, and they're gonna be working on that in the air. The fiber needs special equipment to splice it together, and it also needs an environment where you have a clean environment. Most of the time with the fiber splicing, we actually have to bring one end of the fiber in and the other end of the fiber in a truck. The back actually, it's a trailer. The back end of a trailer, and we have to splice it with specific splicing gear, and it has to be perfectly clean and flawless. So it's more time consuming to probably splice the copper, but you're doing it in the air and you're doing it as it is. And once you connect one end and you're connecting the other end, people are coming back in service as you're actually splicing it together. The fiber, you gotta pull it down, do it in a truck. In the end, it's probably similar, but those are kind of the differences on how that works. Thanks. You're welcome. You're welcome. I'm gonna greet you, Jeff. Technicians, are those same people doing installation, repair, make ready work, or are there different types of people doing those three types of work? Yeah, that's a great question. These, they are different people. The installation and repair folks are the same people. And the people who actually splice those things together like we just talked about, those are the same people. The folks who are doing the make ready work are, that we call them our outside plant technicians, they're our linemen. They're the ones putting poles in, they're the ones who are actually, they build it and everybody else connects it and keeps it running. And so the 18 that you're adding are the installed repair. Correct. And what is the linemen, what is your linemen employee level looking like? Is that up, down the same from five years ago? From five, actually, I can say I believe from three years ago, we're down about two linemen in the same. Okay, thank you. So, Jeff, we've got about a couple more minutes. Okay, so I think just to importantly, and like I said, these jobs that we're adding, these are highly technical, important jobs for us and for Vermont. After two or three years on that level of technician, the wages and benefit packages, these are over $100,000 a year. These are really good jobs that we're creating here in Vermont. One of the things I just wanted to mention because there's been some talk about make ready, that actually the PUC did order a rulemaking on the make ready practice, but just about make ready, timeliness and transparency. One of the things, there's a rule out there, rule 3,700. There's also a tariff of 26. There's a whole, there's all the rules, obviously related to make ready process and full attentions. One of the things that when we're talking about responsiveness and timeliness, I'll just take EC fiber, for example. About two, maybe two and a half years ago, we started having bi-weekly calls with EC fiber. And actually five, at least five resources from Consolidator on those bi-weekly calls. And these calls are talking about specifically what we're doing, where we're doing it, where they need it. It's actually a very high level of coordination. This is combined with a bi-weekly call we have internally. So we have our internal call, then we have a bi-weekly call with EC fiber. So as it relates to transparency, we do this with other companies if they're having large builds because we need to stay on top, everybody needs to stay on top of what we're doing. Those calls are with Green Mountain Power also. So that's where EC fiber's building is in the Green Mountain Power area. So we have bi-weekly calls with them. They do the timeframe to do the make ready. Once you get the check to do the make ready, it's 120 days. We have, back in 2017, we did have delays. I know Irv Tome, I'd mentioned that. Some of that was related to just kind of prioritizing. One of the things we did on our bi-weekly calls is we said, okay, you've got six towns here that you have make ready requests for. Which one do you want us to focus on? Because obviously when you're building a fiber of the prime network or any network, you're gonna start in one area and then you're just gonna kind of continue to build out. You're not gonna build out a little bit here and a little bit there. So we work closely with them to figure out, okay, we know some of these dates are gonna go by. They're gonna be longer than 120 days. Where do you want us to focus on? So as it relates to the overall picture, for example, the 120 days since 2015 to now are average. And I'll say all day, because I see these numbers and I've been on all of these calls with EC-Fiber, that some of these were way over 120 days. But if you're looking at the average, we've had to, we have 176 applications that required make ready. 353 pools, we have to say. This is just us. This isn't a clue about GMP, I have to say. 3,100 lovers, there's a significant amount of work there. And we've averaged 91 days. Some of those we're able to do really quickly, obviously. Some of those we have longer time frames. I know it was right. Some of those were 200 days over the 120 days. But a lot of that was just kind of coordinated with EC-Fiber saying, hey, where do you want us to work? We're gonna not ignore these, but we're gonna prioritize this over this, knowing we're gonna miss these gigs. So when we do that, like I said, right now we're doing these types of calls with two different companies, EC-Fiber one of them and another company. So there's a lot of collaboration. There's a lot of discussion. And I just wanted to just kind of throw that out there as it relates to make ready, timeliness and transparency. And like I mentioned, we're gonna go through the whole room making process with a PC and then we'll come in, we'll work with them and be part of that process. Thank you, Jeff. You're very welcome. You're welcome. Here. Just for letting me squeeze it in. Yeah, no, well, literally. Yeah, literally and figuratively. I will be brief. Yeah, if you could introduce yourself and give me a representing. You're in secret, Vermont Retail and Grocers Association. In regards to, I think it was each 145. We have addressed this idea of requiring retailers to collect a fee at the time of sale for a couple of years now. And Chuck and I have been on opposite sides for a couple of years now, but I am here today to request that the committee consider language which I just sent to Sarah that would allow for a small seller exemption. This language was actually drafted by Chuck, I believe, a couple of years ago as something that we considered, but we weren't ready to support it. That being said this year, I am jumping in and saying, my large retailers, they have said that it's not a problem to collect the fee at the register. However, it's the small retailers in Northeast Kingdom or that don't necessarily have the point of sale system to collect and maybe keep track of those sales so that they can remit it properly. You know, it's just an opportunity that we would like for you to consider. I believe the language is, I'll find it real quick. It would, a seller who certifies to the commissioner of taxes, not later than January 15th of any calendar year, that fewer than 500 retail sales of prepaid wireless telecommunications services were completed during the prior year. So any retailer who sold fewer than 500 of these cards would be exempted, given that they would have to apply to be exempted. Thank you. Yeah, so how do your small retailers handle sales tax? Well, I'm sure that they have a system already established but we're talking about very few sales when it comes to this specific product. So we're just asking for those retailers, the small retailers to not have to be required to keep track of one more separate line. If the number of sales is so few, why would be an extraordinary amount of extra work? That's a good question. How do I explain it? What's the comment? You get word done when you're busy. You know, when you're in a typical practice, you're automatically practicing already to collect the sales tax. It's something that you've been doing. It's you're probably managing it on a weekly basis, maybe sometimes on a daily basis. You don't sell that many prepaid phone cards. So it's just one more requirement for the retailer to say, oh, by the way, I sold three cards this week. I have to keep track of that. What happens, it's one more line item that maybe you're not going in each time and you purchase a prepaid phone card and making that note that you sold excellent phone cards. But they do keep track of their inventory in terms of prepaid phone cards and such. Well, I would anticipate they would but I grew up in a hardware store where it was pretty much difficult to keep track of all of our inventory. You know, again, it's just the small retailer that we're asking for. I can pretty much anticipate that the majority of the sales are done at large retailers, Target or Best Buy or Walmart. They have the systems in place to already track that stuff. Just, so, Erin, this legislation, we're, because of federal changes, without this legislation, we're looking at a whole opening up in the existing business from $600 to $700,000 potentially. So it would be helpful if there's any data that you were able to share that could help us understand what we're talking about in terms of the exemption, what the exemption is called. What, what that? So by them not, by them having the exemption, what would that? What would it save them from having to remit to you? Okay, I will do my best to get that information for you. It would be, and maybe it's the inverse, that is the way of doing it, so what are your large retailers gonna pay in? Maybe EZ? Yeah, can't delay. Let's try that. So the language of the exemption is the units you're measuring are cards. Yes. But those cards are variable for the dollar value they represent, right, or minutes. Yes, right. And is there a, I don't know, maybe, Chuck, is there an average? I mean, do people buy these at $20 increments or $50 cards or, and just, similar to what Laura was asking, what are we looking at in this exemption? Representative Chuck Storrow here. To be honest with you, I don't know. I do know the language that Ms. Seacrest is referencing. Yes, we prepared it, I've prepared it with consulting with my partner who specializes in this area. And, you know, we're willing to have that small solar exemption to be part of the bill. It's up to us, so it's okay with us. But in terms of that specific question, I don't know, I can try and find out too. I actually think this is important information. We're trying to, you know, as Laura was saying, we're trying to address essentially a revenue issue here. And so to carve out an exemption, addresses the ultimate function we're trying to sell for. So that really would be helpful, something in the market. Presumably the small retailers keep track of some items that are sales tax and some that are tax exempt and, you know, beverage deposits and things like that already, is that accurate? Yes and no, it's not just the business owner that's keeping track. So what if you have an employee that started, you know, a month ago and over that first month they've been working there, I don't know, they've dropped the ball and said, oh, by the way, we need to keep track of X amount of sales based on the number of sales that we've seen in the last month. Not every small business in the state has a POS system. Like they're not, you're not scanning it in every product. You're not, you know, there are several small businesses that are still punching into, you know, like an old cash register, the cost of each product and that doesn't necessarily itemize or identify every product that is sold. So there's no guarantee that we've got everyone tracking the exact number of sales that every employee is making. So perhaps a better way to ask it, are those retailers that do not have POS systems manually keeping track of beverage deposits and what items are tax exempt and what are taxed? I can't speak for those retailers. I would anticipate that they have some type of system down as they can remit all the taxes. The question I've got is, how much does a retailer make on the sale of these cards? And is it, are they basically, this model is just doing it as a service to the customer rather than an actual revenue stream that they might? It's a service to their customers. I don't have the exact number that a retailer, I can ask. I can ask some of my small retailers that do sell them, but I don't anticipate they're making a lot of money. It would be interesting to know how much they can make. May I ask Chuck actually a question with regard to when these cards are recharged, can these cards be recharged? So can you have additional minutes put on? Yes, I believe so. Okay, and so when that financial transaction takes place, that transaction is taking place with AT&T, is that right? I believe so, I don't have a personal experience with prepaid, but you can go to the website and you can put money on your prepaid account. And so because the card, the problem with the card, if I understand correctly federally, is that we're asking you to pay and you're not participating in the financial transaction. When that recharge is happening, are you paying the Universal Service Fund? Yes, yes, through the existing method that I discussed earlier with the Public Utilities Commission order, basically saying figure out how much of this is attributable to the owners, how many are sending the money. So when it's recharged, yeah. So the only thing that's really changing here that we're talking about, 245 is the actual sale of the card. And in all of the initials. Right, right. And I don't know, I suspect the seekers may know better than me that if you buy a card at a third party retail, perhaps you can go back in and give them money to reload the card as opposed to doing it directly with the, I don't know. My understanding is the prepaid cards are just like gift cards, you know, like you have to punch in a code every time you want more minutes, you've got to go buy a card and punch in another code. So I think the rechargeable would be mainly online. If I want more minutes, I can go online and get minutes that way or I can walk into a retailer and I have to buy similar to a gift card where I have to scratch off the back there and put in a code. I don't think you take back a card. My understanding is you don't take back a physical card and say I want to put more money on this. I'll just say, throw it out and buy another one. Yeah. I will do my best to get that information for you. That's what I want. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your time.